the whisker on my earlobe

This morning while plucking a hair from my earlobe as thick as a chin whisker I recalled my childhood visits to the barber with my dad. Saturday mornings belonged to my dad and me during my grade school years. He and I got out of the house, where my mother and six sisters ruled the roost, not to go fishing or hunting or do little league or some other typical father-and-son activity, but to do the weekly household grocery shopping.

In a family as large as mine, we each had our household chores and the weekly grocery shopping was one I shared with dad. He and I would climb into the big empty nine-seater Greenbrier van, vacant of its usual load of passengers, and head for the Henhouse, a giant farmers-market-like grocery store with fresh produce, a real butcher with a meat locker, and beehived sample ladies with seasoned sausage on toothpicks and cheese on Ritz crackers. We would over load a giant shopping cart full of canned baked beans and peas, chicken and burger meat, gallons of milk, and large boxes of breakfast cereal and Modess.

For as long as we went there, the women at the check out line would comment on these two “men” buying all this food and Modess. I was too young to be embarrassed and my father’s sense of humor taught me instinctively that it was indeed funny but not an issue.

Sometimes we made detours through my dad’s old neighborhood. Down the street from the Henhouse was MacLean’s Bakery, which had the best bear claws, and across the old trolley tracks was Lloyd’s Barbershop, where my dad had apparently been going to get his hair cut since he and Lloyd were both young men. A trip to Lloyd’s was tacked on to our grocery trips maybe once a month, extending the day both in time and space. I was sharing a piece of my dad’s private time and history.

Lloyd’s was dark and tobacco stained, with fixtures from the early 1900s and a long mirrored shelf of hair tonics no longer available to anyone but professional barbers. I have no idea how old Lloyd was by the time I first climbed up into his barber’s chair, but my father was in his 50s for most of my grade school years and had the grooming needs that I now realize were those of a middle aged man; specifically, nose and ear hair. I distinctly remember wondering, as I watched Lloyd take the trimmers to my dad’s earlobes, when would I be old enough to need the hairs in my nose and ears trimmed, as if it was a rite of passage that would come with my driver’s license or high school graduation.

Little did I know that this privilege wouldn’t come until I was in my 40s and that it would be unwanted by then. I guess, with the way my dad took it in stride, like the shopping chart full of Modess, I never realized it was an issue.

please do not throw towel in toilet

In public restrooms, have you noticed the direct relationship between where the hand-towel dispenser and trashcan are located to whether or not there is a sign begging customers not to throw the towels in the toilet? I have.

Last night Bob (my partner) and I went to dinner at a slightly passé hipster "Asian Fusion" restaurant on Smith Street in Brooklyn. I say slightly passé because, like most of the restaurants on Smith, it's past its "surprising-to-find-such-cool-good-food-in-Brooklyn" phase and has moved on to an absentee owner and its third or fourth chef.

Anyway, the restaurant's restroom is one of those dimly lit designer restrooms, complete with an oh-so-trendy ultra-chic sink that looks like a large wooden bowl on a cement slab. (In restaurant bathrooms I half expect to find large leafs of iceberg lettuce and a sneeze guard over these kinds of bowls.) After washing my hands I had to look around a couple seconds to find the towel dispenser, which was all the way over above the left side of the toilet, with the trash can to the right of the toilet. A hand-lettered sign was taped to the dispenser that said "dear customer: please do not throw towel in toilet."

This only confirmed something I've been noticing for years: the further the towels and trash are from the sink and the closer they are to the toilet, the more chance there is for customers (all be it stupid ones) to toss their garbage into the toilet rather than the can. Who knows why this happens? Maybe they forget where they are for a moment. Maybe they've done their duty, as it were, and their minds have moved on to Jennifer and Brad or real estate, or whatever.

But I believe the fault lies primarily with the restaurant owners themselves. Feng shui notwithstanding, if the towels and the trash are right by the sink where they belong I will mindlessly dry my hands and toss the towel in the appropriate receptacle while I check for stray nose hairs and think about shoe molding for my dining room.

Anyway, look out for it yourself. Next time you see a hand-lettered sign on the towel dispenserer take note of where the towels and trash are and let me know if you notice a pattern too.

This is Jay Woolsrake: In the Thick of It

so what is woolsrake in the thick of?

(This was my first entry, published in August of 2005. You may also wish to read my most recent posts.)

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Those of you who know my photography know that I'm usually in the thick of body hair: male body hair; thick burly male body hair.

Then again, those of you who also know my personal life know that recently I've been in the thick of apartment renovation and will soon be in the thick of moving. Once that's over with I will be living in the thick of the Village: what I might affectionately consider the fuzzy navel of New York City in general. (Does that make Broadway the City's "happy trail?").

Recently I've also been deeply caught up in publishing projects like the new 2006 Calendar of my photographs titled Bear Men, produced by 10% Consumer Products/Village Lighthouse Press; and the forthcoming Self-Exposure, an anthology of male nude self-portraits edited by Reed Massengill and published by Rizzoli Universe press.

So let's see how In the Thick of It grows (read my most recent posts). Hopefully it won't just be the place where I gripe when my life gets, shall we say, hairy; but rather a venue for thoughts and discussion on all the topics that keep gay male nude photographers living in New York City like me engaged and thriving.

Feel free to let me know what you think.

http://www.woolsrake.com/thickofit/